


Gravity Traps

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1990-01-01
Updated: 1990-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:07:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry





	Gravity Traps

The traitorous planet turns under me,  
throwing me to the lurking enemy,  
and the sun falls away  
faster than I can pound the globe  
with phobic feet,  
grabbing fistfuls of light.  
##  
Night, she once told me, was the only time  
she didn't feel mired in the clay  
of a planet. Night was when  
dirt-crawlers gape up and see  
beyond.  
##  
Blazer of trails that  
this landlubber dare not follow –  
what lies beyond, dead Jenna, for you?  
##  
Cold placid stars,  
once you've known them for the giants they are,  
become roiling furnaces gulping matter.  
Monster stars would gobble the galaxy if not leashed.  
How is it that her human face could scare me  
like the suns?  
In their unholy white eyes I see her own,  
luminous with grim intent,  
drunk as a whirling meteor with the thrill  
as her laughter peals down the shaft  
of a laser cannon,  
mad with the hammer of her blood,  
mad and heartbroken  
with the bloodlust of the universe.  
She loved so wildly its every mote of dancing dust.  
The fundamental element  
in the stars and planets,  
in the human heart, she would say,  
is dancing dust.  
I can imagine Jenna's atoms  
joining a mathematically precise and frenzied  
pirates' fling  
in whichever gravity trap of a star fed on her.  
##  
I never managed to contain her  
in my philosophies,  
or in my presumptuous mortal arms.  
No narrow pit of earth contains her.  
Space always was her eerie inhuman playground.  
When I look at the night I only see  
her grave – as fathomless  
as the meaning of her life and death.  
I'd drop the timeless unanswerable questions,  
the why-are-we-here, the neverending whys,  
to have merely this explained:  
##  
Did she die for a cargo? Did she fight,  
fiercely territorial,  
and, besieged, rend the hull she loved  
for twenty crates of rusted guns  
bound for a squalid dealer who paid poorly?  
Did she ram that blockade  
of a nowhere planet  
with the fury of the just,  
with the pathos of the fated,  
after winking farewell, again, to me –  
“You know it's not my style, Blake,  
to go laying down my life for freedom.  
Ruin the image.” And sidling away, demurring,  
“There's no cause I'd die for, Roj,  
my skin's worth more to me  
than anything --”  
and swaggering into that ruffian frontier crowd –  
pausing to watch two hotblooded ne’er-do-wells brawl,  
the dancing dust of their hearts, perhaps,  
doing a not-quite-sane jig of joy and fear  
around that gravity trap, death,  
until a blade bit flesh  
for the sake of a stolen trinket –  
then going her way with more  
irony than surprise,  
swagger now rather prouder and rather a pose  
and a burden of understanding on her shoulders?  
##


End file.
